Left 4 Dead

[MattyD]

I played through No Mercy last night for about five hours straight. This game rocks! My appreciation is tempered with frustration however as it seems the AI Director was making my team pay for our relatively good performance and pace during the first four chapters of the scenario.

We kept getting to the end-of-movie rescue encounter and getting absolutely butchered by insane amounts of infected and special zombies. Every plan we came up with crumpled as soon as we began and either the Director did the opposite to what we expected or mercilessly exploited whatever weaknesses we had.

It's great that it plays so differently each time and it didn't feel as frustrating as the same amount of repetition in a regular game, but it was still disheartening to see that the AI wasn't about to let up on a clearly losing team. The fiendish bastard was literally picking us apart one by one - first a smoker would drag someone off, then the poor victim would be swamped with so many infected and boomers that we just couldn't reach them in time to rescue them. Then the Tank would show up and punch us one by one off the edge of the building We must have played that level over 30 times without success.

I hear my team did finally manage to complete the stage in the end but after I'd gone, so I'll have to have another crack at it later.

[jimmbob]

I hear my team did finally manage to complete the stage in the end but after I'd gone, so I'll have to have another crack at it later.

I'm going on now Matty hurry up and get on. Jesus Christ, this game is the tits.

[AaronBekir]

if anyone else wants to play, just add me AaronBekir, will be playing this tonight, plays so much better than in SP.

[Charlie]

Mine's just arrived but I started playing Dead Space yesterday and don't like having two new games on the go at once, especially when they're both nighttime games. Might have to delay playing it for a few days. If I can.

[elaniel]

Really enjoy this. Really adds so much more to it when you're playing with others (such a laugh).

Add me guys if you wanna play - Elaniel

On right now if anyone else is

[NekoFever]

I played through the airport scenario last night with some random Americans and had a great time. This is about the last game that I'd expect to have a good time on with the plebs on Live but I actually beat the odds and got some people who weren't complete idiots and wanted to play it properly.

It just convinced me how evil the Director is, though. We kept getting bloody Witches in areas where we couldn't avoid them, and it's really tense when you're trying to sneak past one with your lights off and you can see her starting to get agitated so you hold off a bit... and then it spawns hundreds of normal zombies in the stairwell you just came from so you just have to run for it and hope.

When you think about how it does things it really is like the director of a horror movie. Very clever system, but still evil.

[halfhearts]

The Versus on this is ace, being the zombies is just great stalking the survivors and working with your other teammates to totally hammer the survivors is awesome! playing this on PC

[MattyD]

The Versus on this is ace, being the zombies is just great stalking the survivors and working with your other teammates to totally hammer the survivors is awesome! playing this on PC

Not tried this yet, I can see it being quite a laugh but it sounds like the devs consider it more of an 'extra' feature than an integral part of the game, which perhaps explains why only two of the campaigns are Versus-mode compatible.

In the director's commentary they talk a lot about balancing issues with the various Special zombies in Versus mode, especially the Tank, and at one point they all but 'fess up that Versus mode isn't properly balanced at all and as is really only there for a bit of fun.

[kendra]

Been playing this for .. nearly 15 hours straight now..

Urg, my head hurts, great game, got it for the PC as just far easier to be honest, I do hope there's more levels, but still trying to do the thing on expert mode... that'll be the challenge..

Done them all on Advanced, the step up is exponential at the very least !

Had to laugh, we spent ages doing the first part of the first chapter on Expert, two of us got to the safe house door, I turned round and shot my team mate in the face and he died =) I thought he was a Zombie !

I also laughed at the number of zombies you have to kill for one of the achievements =)

[ezee ryder]

Well I ended up picking this up for cheap today and (despite the fact that it may have RROD my 360) my mind has been totally changed. I have gone from "meh" to "this is an amazing amount of fun". Mind you the game only really shines in multiplayer, playing on your own with the AI isn't fun at all. What superbly implemented multiplayer though, really really good.

[MJ]

Some of the Achievements are practically impossible on your own because your friendly AI is too good.

[Brats]

I just got this and have no-one to play with (Booo!). If ayone fancies any games tonight, please give me a shout.

[AaronBekir]

played this last night with ezee, both on campaign and versus, how amazing, i had played through the demo a few times, but never really grasped how much it changes with the director, so for the first 2 sections i was constantly going to ezee (who hadnt played it as much) oh theres a hunter here/boomer there/ witch there...... how wrong was i!!

Everything kept on changing!! Versus has to be one of, if the not the best multiplayer fun ever!! on one chapter when we were the infected we managed to kill the opposing team as they left the safehouse, they got a score of 5! how pleasing!!

Will be back on this later tonight with ezee i think, and we could do with 2 more human characters, we plan to finish no mercy this time, as with my power surge and his RROD we couldn't do it in one go!! then on for some mad versus. My GT is AaronBekir. so hit me up!!

[jimmbob]

I just got this and have no-one to play with (Booo!). If ayone fancies any games tonight, please give me a shout.

I'm always about, I think you're on my FL.

[PeteJ]

I have this on 360 and PC now, hardly played it on PC and not even opened it on 360 (waiting for a mate to come around so we can blast it on split screen). I'll be on during the week no doubt

Has the 360 version had a bump up in difficulty since the demo too? I hope so.